Current Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller’s term is expiring (again), and the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing to question the nominee to replace Mueller, James Comey.

Yesterday, the Guardianreleased two previously-classified documents describing the internal "minimization" and "targeting" procedures used by the NSA to conduct surveillance under Section 702. These procedures are approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on an annual basis and are supposed to serve as the bulwark between the NSA's vast surveillance capabilities and the private communications of Americans.

People around the world have joined EFF's call to stop the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of ordinary people, and now you can show your support with our revamped NSA spying t-shirt for members! EFF's original 2008 design depicted the collaboration of AT&T with the NSA - a reference to our Hepting v. AT&T and Jewel v. NSA warrantless wiretapping cases. Now we see the NSA's glowering, red-eyed eagle using his talons to plug into all of your data. Join or renew your EFF membership today to help unplug big brother!

A lot remains uncertain about the number of users affected by the NSA PRISM surveillance program that is taking place, the extent to which companies are involved, and how the NSA handles this sensitive data. Does the NSA regularly collect and examine a huge swath of the cloud communications of American and foreign Internet users? Does the agency present evidence and seek careful judicial review to obtain limited amounts of user data related to individual investigations? Or is the answer somewhere in the middle, with queries being constructed such that algorithms scan most or all of the accounts, identifying a smaller set of "interesting" accounts whose contents are sent to the NSA?